posted : Tue, July 27, 2010 at 13:53
Are you using latex bottle nipples? If so, try switching to silicone. My daughter started on Neocate when she was 5 months old, after I did a modified elimination diet while breastfeeding and failed to identify what she was allergic to. (She was still reacting strongly to something even after I'd completely eliminated all dairy, beef, and soy from my diet.) There was a huge improvement within 48 hours of starting Neocate, but in the next few days things went downhill again quickly. We were starting to panic and thought she was reacting to the Neocate itself, but it turns out she was allergic to the latex bottle nipples we were using. As soon as we switched to silicone - and also got rid of all rubber toys and pacifiers, etc. - the problem went away completely. She did great on Neocate.
She's now 14 months old and has outgrown her dairy allergy, and she's finally eating mostly solids. We started the solids late (around 7-8 months) and is was very, very slow going with a lot of setbacks. She still gets two bottles of Neocate a day, but otherwise she's eating table food and a few purees. It turns out that she gets awful hives from apricots, peaches, and watermelon, all of which have some proteins in common with latex. So that might have been my daughter's main problem all along. Fortunately she seems to be outgrowing her extreme sensitivity to latex, too.
Your baby may be having a completely different issue, but it's worth considering if you do use latex nipples. None of our doctors, including the pediatric GI specialist, ever mentioned the possibility of a latex allergy - we only realized it after my mother, who used to be a dental hygenist, made an offhand comment that maybe it was the bottle nipples. I guess it is an uncommon allergy in chlidren (especially those, like my daughter, who don't have spina bifida), but I found out after the fact that I'm actually allergic to latex too, she may have been sensitized to it through breastfeeding.
Good luck!